Speaking of Family in General Terms – 2010 So Far

June 27th, 2010 Thomasso

This is a post about some of the highlights of breaking points and changes that have occurred in my family, those around me of whom I am genetically attached to. I will not post explicit information about anyone person with details and personal information as I know how some members are very direct about their anonymity. I will respect that here on my blog.

To start off with, I like to congratulate the newest member to the family and to the world, my great (my sister’s, daughter’s daughter) niece. She was born on June 14, 2010 and marks the first of her generation into the new millennium. I really hope that we have left world in good enough shape for her to have all the wonderful opportunities that we have enjoyed in the preceding generations. It will be a tough run for her as my niece and her husband are just starting out themselves, but I am sure they will succeed too and move forward in peace and prosperity. A toast to the next generation and to a new life born into this world.

The heart is an interesting organ of the body. It not only congers up intrinsic values in our everyday language, but it also is considered the bases of the function of life next to breathing. A couple of months ago a brother-in-law had to undergo open heart surgery to fix a faulty valve. In all fairness to universal healthcare in Canada, the problem was fixed within a week of his diagnoses. With the advances in technology, he was discharged from the hospital within a week, and is expected to start working again by this August, and one can only imagine what would have happened if this took place over three decades ago.

An uncle who has had a very prosperous life suffered a stroke several months, and is now starting to recover some his basic motor function again. I spoke with with today on the phone, and was awestruck at the severity and recovery of his stroke. He had one half of his body paralysed and the stroke took away his ability to speak. But since that dreadful moment back in February he has shown great promise of recovery. With the support of his family, he is sure to make a full recovery.

A great uncle has move into a senior’s care facility. This is where time stops for no one and a signal that none of us are getting younger. Although I was never as close as I wanted to be too him, he was an iconic figure in my life. With so much distance between me and him, it is tough to build a bridge and keep the bonds strengthen, but time goes on leaving nothing in its path untouched. I will always have those memories.

The two tornadoes that touched down in Midland Ontario last week were very close to where two of my great aunts live. Midland is sort of my home town. I was very young when we moved from there, but I have lots of family there.

I sit here thinking about myself and the family around me, and how they have impacted me, and how I have impacted all of them. The family has shaped my core values, but as I leave the bonds of the family, and embarked on my own journey, my core values shifted greatly as my trajectory through life goes on. An English professor once taught me that this process is called existentialism, and that it is significant for each person, and as a significant event happens in one’s life, this existentialism will change creating a whole new set of core values for one’s self. Perhaps one should be mindful of this and make a significant effort not to forget the change in core values because this could also lead to a loss of other connections made from the distant past.

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It is Those Little Mistakes That Look So Cool

December 25th, 2009 Thomasso

It is those little mistakes that look so cool becuase they look so neat, as they catch my eye in the file browser. I was digging through my archive files preparing for an upgrade when I stumbled upon a whole bunch of files that were about to be deleted from off of my hard drive. Most of them were old documents from classes gone by; stuff like rough drafts and working text files from project, assignments and research data from as far back as four years ago that are of no use to me any more. Most of the images were not marked, probably from being transferred from defunct/expired Microsoft programs that have long since outlive their usefulness, to shots from the old digital camera that worked only half the time. It was fun to travel down memory lane–but the files had to go as they took up a lot of space.

Both of these images are very recent, about a couple of weeks ago. I never really had the time to go through the whole batch, but these two looked interesting, so I kept them. The first one is from a train accident where a vehicle tried to cross over the tracks during the morning rush-hour, tying to beat the train before it blocks the road for twenty minutes. The driver was not hurt, but his pick-up truck was damaged badly.

I like the dark blue effect from the rain, and how the shutter speed on the camera was too slow for the dim light that was available for the camera settings I had. I was stopped on the road waiting for the police to move the vehicle from off the road when I took this. I had front row seats for this one.

This second image was a failed attempt at creating a 3 dimensional box using the sketching tool on a program called InkScape. I’ve talked about this program a couple of days ago here on the blog. It did not pass my approval, but I some how managed to keep it, probably becuase I invested so much time into it.

So we are just 4 days into the winter season and it is still looking like fall outside. I phoned my baby sister who lives up around Prince Rupert, and she told me that they are getting plus 15C weather with high clouds and some sunny periods! Hey, that is my weather they are getting! I want it back. Lucky people. Perhaps we will get our turn at the weather system that is brining them that unseasonally warm temperatures.

Wow, it is only Friday! Woo-Hoo! I love long weekends.

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A Congratulatory Post to My Sister

August 22nd, 2009 Thomasso

I got some news yesterday from my sister, JM. She just found her first job at the start of her professional career as a caregiver in the health care system. For the last two years she had gone to college were she put herself through the rigours of evening classes and achieved all the necessary skills to work in this profession.

What is monumental about this turning point is that there were huge odds against her from seeking such employment opportunities at the start, and up until now. As we are all well aware there is a recession, or depression right now, (depending on whether you are employed or not) and any civil servant job, albeit from a public or private position, are very hard to come by. The cut backs in British Columbia are going to be huge as our provincial budget update coming this September has already started to leak out to the media. Even today, lay-offs and  hiring freezes are in effect at most care homes for the elderly. Long term care and nursing positions have being drastically frozen too as every budget in the public sector will be trimmed. The money just is not there to support the system right now.

My personal belief is that jobs are always going to available in this segment of the work force because the tail end of the baby-bombers are just 10 to 15 years away from hitting retirement—that is simple logic. Public or private, the demand is most definitely going to exist and grow over the next 30 years for senior’s nursing care. With so many people getting up into their golden years and living longer, the toll on the healthcare system is most likely going to be tax to its death. Canadians are not going to take being asked to pay for higher taxes, so electing governments that promises tax-cuts is now the trend; just look at our federal government right now and see what they represent. However, Canadians will demand their healthcare, and it will not be there for them unless they can pay for it privately because the public purse will shrink. As I see it, the healthcare system will just be the shell of its former self.

With all of this doom-and-gloom, getting a job right in the middle of the economic downturn is a triumph of both good fortune and hard work. Perhaps the real message I am saying here is that education is the key to weathering a good economic meltdown. We will always have labour in the workforce at any time, but specialists and professionals are always going to be in demand no matter where you sit in the business cycle.

Posted in Events, Family, General, Social economics | 2 Comments »

A Very Good Upgrade (Ubuntu 9.04) and Mums the Word

May 10th, 2009 Thomasso

Looks like Mother’s Day has arrived and everyone will try and either contact their mother, or wish her a happy Mother’s Day. Because of my busy schedule this weekend I may have to forego the phone call until this Wednesday, but I will say this now, “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!”

Last night I did the upgrade once I was satisfied that all my favourite programs were still going to work. The release of Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope, actually came out in April, but having learned the lesson the hard way, I found waiting a few weeks pays off as it gives the community a chance to fix most of the bugs that pop up from each “short term” release.

The only big issue I had was loosing my sound. I have to use Pulse Audio software as the ALSA programs seem to have been messed up in the repositories. It was scary at first because of the new format with the audio selectors and configuration set-up, but after about twenty minutes my speakers were pumping out lovely sounds of music.

Jaunty, Ubuntu 9.04 has one of the fastest boot ups I have ever seen so far. It now takes my machine about ten to twelve seconds from start to desktop. These are boot times that only Window$ users can only dream of. Remember, I did an upgrade, so I have a lot of stuff on this box that needs to be started during boot-up, as opposed to a clean install.

Oh, and don’t ask me what a Jackalope is. I have no idea, nor have I ever heard of such animal. Someone said that it was a rabbit with antlers? Go figure….

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The Super Turtle Logo

August 25th, 2008 Thomasso

I have been getting a lot of emails about the Super Turtle Logo I made for Super Turtle. I used bits and pieces of it on my header at the top of this web page. I spent a bit of time adding more features and fine-tuning the graphic to have more detail.

Since this version I have added more to it and made the turtle more serious looking than the happy reptile you see here.I’ve also added more colour and background features too.

So there you go. Tell me what you think, or what else I should add to it–or subtract. I would also like to hear from Super Turtle herself for more imput?

Posted in Family, General, Photographs | 2 Comments »

My Youth of Love and Romance

October 8th, 2007 Thomasso

I bet after I type this out I will receive more than the usual amounts of hits I normally get here. Well, the reason why I’m dredging up this story of my past is because I just came across an old photograph of my very first “true love.” After all these years I thought it should be put into the archives so that one day into the distant future I would have a record of it, something to share with friends and family for the year to come. So my story starts in the cold damp Northern town of Terrace BC, when the Rubics Cube was all the rage, and ZZ-top was number one in the music charts: Sharp Dress Man. OK, I’m showing my age here, I’ll admit it. I’m going to use a fake alias because I know “she” is still very much alive, and to a certain degree she does know my whereabouts through other mutual friends, and she has family of her own. The past is the past, and should be kept that way I think. Anyway….

Once upon a time, in a place far far up North, a young boy, that’s me, who lived with his family on a farm that had animals, and was very far from town. [Now I'm switching the pronoun around here--OK] So, when I went to school, or when my parents drove me into town as they went shopping, it was an opportunity not to be missed. At school I met lots of people, and coming from the outskirts of town, the tiny town was like a big city of urbanites that I know today because I had never seen so many people at once, well for that matter, have seen so many other kids my age!

School was an challenge because not being accustom to the social standards and playground politics, finding my clique was difficult, but once established, I quickly found a group that took me in, sort of a rough bunch I guess, but nonetheless it was a group of friends to be with. It was through this group of friends that I met Sally. Sally was also sort of a misfit because she dressed in promiscuous garb, and she felt that she was one of the boys in terms of being adventurous and out going. I had never seen girls fight until I met Sally; she was a real go-getter in her own right. But anyway, the love affair took place at a bush party up at the old gravel pit, something that I think is synonymous throughout every back-wood Northern community throughout Canada, where drugs and alcohol are abundant, and the rules of social conduct are very blurred. Girls love guys with money and transportation, as I soon discovered, and if you have both, then you are as close to the top of hierarchy scale as you can get, if not the Alpha-Male! But because of my age, I had the transportation, and money, but never succeeded to the Alpha status. However, I lured Sally with my two redeeming traits or merits!

I will never forget the awkwardness of doing it. In fact, if I ever have children, I would take the time, go against the family values that my parents held, and really talk to them about consummation and commitment because my life would have been a whole lot easier if I had known all about it! I would have probably stayed a virgin a lot longer had I known about how much energy and time you need to put into it–getting to first base–as it were. But anyway, It was awkward. All I had were the basic stories told by my friends, and some very vague discussion from my Mom and Dad, and a school sex education film that was made way back in the sixties. And I’m sure Sally was just as equally an novices at it too, despite the rumors and tails told by my friends.

Our romantic fling lasted less than half an hour. We went back to the fire where twenty or so partyers sat in a large circle, each with a beer in one hand and puffing on cigarettes with the other. We sort of blended in back into the crowd after that. But I do remember my first emotion after that experience, it was a feeling deep guilt. Weird eh? I don’t know why I felt like that? Maybe it was all the brain-washing my parents gave me because they absolutely feared me knocking up a young lady and having children out of wed-lock, or the fear of AIDS, STDs that was making the news almost daily then, so unprotected sex was an issue. Yes Mom, I used a condom! Either way, I felt guilty. Later that night I spoke to Sally, and she told me that she felt the same way, so it was a mutual feeling after all. But we never got back together after that. We did it, and that was it.

We would go on through high school, pass each other in the halls and never make eye contact. For the years after that night from up at the gravel pit, we would never come close to each other again. It was only until almost twenty years later, when I came back to Terrace for a visit, that we spoke to one another again. It was then that I got to see what would of have happened if I had stuck it out and stayed with her. Sally was beautiful in her own charm. She had her family with her, three children and a dog. We met at the shopping centre and exchanged salutations and blurbed out what we were doing, and what we were were up to, and the basic catching up stuff you can do in five minutes. I found out that she had being married and then divorced after an abusive husband put her in the hospital. She was war harden and very independent. She was very shocked to find out that I had not married and had no children of my own. But after that we walked onwards heading off in different directions.

So the question I’m asking myself right now is: what is true love? Sally will obviously hold a special place in my thoughts as “the first time” and this should be, because it was. So does the meaning and significance of the “first time” have a bearing on life’s experiences? Because I did learn so much from that experience, that that moment should mark the way love should be after that–right? There was no Earth shattering thunder, or apotheosis of uncontrolled kinetic energy, or a moment of truth and revelation, it was boring and messy. Perhaps the “first time” should not be counted, or used as a reference point in one’s life? Maybe it should be ignored altogether!

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What a Day!

December 22nd, 2006 Thomasso

Wow… What a day. There are just so many things to list here that It may take some time for me to jot them all down. So I’ll do it in the order that they pop up in my head.

First, I must say sorry to NetChick for not getting over to the Holiday Shindig that she had at her place. I feel really bad about that because everything was all set–and then…. But as bad-luck would have it, and it never fails not to show up, I got called back home while I was at the Port Mann Bridge, so I turned around. Regrettably, the crises that unfolded was a minor one, and I’m now kicking myself in the butt for leaving the phone on–pooh on the guy that invented the cell phone. Sorry Tanya, I wish I had just kept on going into Vancouver.

Second, Today is the day that I go through my employment transition. Think of it this way–I’m unemployed for the next couple of weeks. Yup-pee! A true holiday! Ooooops, did I just say that out loud?????? I know, I should sound like it is a tragedy, but…. well, I need a break.

Third, I got in touch with my youngest sister, Snoozer, (who hates that name), and they are all doing find after the storms that went through BC last week, that caused interruptions on their power, phone and Internet service. She says hi, and wanted to mention to everyone that she sent out photos of her kids to everyone on the Family News Letter list. I just got my photos last night, and her kids are growing like, “Bad Weeds,” as Dad used to say. I feel old….

There is more, just to tired to type them all out.

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Canada Day Celebrations

June 29th, 2006 Thomasso

This long weekend sort of sneaked up on me, totally catching me by surprise–not that I am complaining or anything. I was really getting into my new job. I was actually enjoying meeting all of my new colleges, and getting to know the place a little bit better. The typical challenges of learning the ropes and procedures were learnt in just a few hours. I have yet to find a job were I could not figure out all of the functions and protocols within just two day, and this company was no exception. It was kind of nice that time just flew by while I was having fun. I will be definitely writing about this experience in the days to come.

The weekend is here, and the time for rest and relaxation is now upon us. I figure that I will do a mini road trip this Saturday, now that I have more time to myself: why not spend it on myself and go for a drive. I feel I need the time away from the home, and see something new, different and off-the-beaten-path.

Also, I have some personal business to take care of, as it appears that I have a “Dead-Beat Employer” to look after. Yes, a person, for whom I worked for at the goodness of my heart, scammed me the money that was payment, in lieu of wages, gave me a cheque that bounced at his Bank. So, I now will perform the ritual collection process, then follow that with a formal complaint to the Ministry of Labour, then off to Small Claims Court. Oh the hassles of the “Dead Beat Employer.”

And to all of my family: the News Letter seems to be a sucsess! The Eamiler works! Hope that you all can get your email addresses off to me so I can include them in the next issue.

Have a great Canada Day everyone!

Posted in Events, Family, General | 2 Comments »

The Day for Mothers

May 14th, 2006 Thomasso

When I awoke this morning, I was greeted by the sun shinning through my window, and a bright yellow Post-it-Note stuck to the outside of my window that read, “Don’t forget Mom!” I laughed when I noticed it hanging there, lit up like a bright neon sign, flickering in the morning breeze, because it reminded me of the jokes we were making the night before, about the consequences of what could happen if you forget to call to say thank you to our mothers–thank you for bringing me into the world. We talked about the power of mothers, and the influences they have over us, and how can change our destiny, and possess the will to make us submit, with just a blink of their eye. We remarked about how a day, this day, once a year, was set aside so that all the children could celebrate, and dedicate time to spend with them, and keep the family together: mothers, grand mothers, and great grand mothers. But really, in our evil satire, we knew, deep, deep down inside us, that of all the people in the world we are most indebted to: it is our mothers who we owe the most.

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Things are Going Along

April 27th, 2006 Thomasso

It has being a busy week , and with just 3 days left there is still lots to be done. I was actually feeling a little guilty not posting anything for the last while. I went on a mini road trip into the Hope, Princeton area for a couple of days to do some site seeing, but with the price of gas I thought I would cut it short and save some money. I shot a lot of photos along the way, too many to post, but I did see many things that, had I being in a hurry, I would of missed them. I met an old prospectors who still pans for gold along the Fraser River and some “squatters” who claim that they have not worked in fifteen years, that they lived off the land. Somehow I did not buy their storey? The highlight of the trip was three lovely women I met while on the main highway leaving Kamloops, 3 hours East of Vancouver. They were stopped along the road, I guess they were looking for plants that were growing along the hill near the road, and the roots from the one plants was too heavy, so I felt it was my good nature to help them out. They offered me a coffee at the next stop, so we sat and talked for a while. They have my number.

When I got home, I had a million e mails sitting there, waiting for me to answer them. Instead, I just put them hold until today, there were just too many to reply to–so if you were expecting an answer–this is why. However, I had a couple of e mails that could not wait; my sister Julia sent me some photos of her new daughter, Paula, so I (and you too), get to see what she finely looks like! What a little cutie! I wish I was there to see her. I think in this photo, she was just 3 days old.

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